Over 6M Vietnamese People Escape from Poverty

(VBSP News) VBSP contributed to helping about six million Vietnamese people escaped from poverty between 2012 and 2016, with the poverty rate dropping from 15.9% to 9.1% during the period. This figure is reported by state media, citing a report released on December 19th 2018..

Raising goat model helped the ethnic poor improve likelihood in Phong Tho district, Lai Chau province 

The report, conducted by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in Vietnam, the Ministry of Labor-Invalids and Social Affairs, and the Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences, highlights the impressive progress Vietnam has made in implementing the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) No.1 on poverty reduction. It held that of the 17 SDGs targeted for 2030, the goal number one is the most accessible in Vietnam. Poverty reduction achievements also brought the country to the 57th position out of 193 UN members in SDG indicators in 2018, up nine places compared to 2017. However, poverty still haunts many areas, especially in regions highly populated by ethnic minority groups. The multidimensional poverty ratio in the northern mountainous and Central Highlands regions is two times higher than the average ratio of the country. The gap in spending, income, education, and sanitary toilet access between the Kinh group and minority groups expanded in the 2012-2016 period, the report said, adding that poor households with disabled family members have less access to education and employment compared to the rest of society.

Over 16 years, VBSP has delivered financial schemes to 100% communes, wards and towns across the country; particularly in ethnic minority areas, extremely disadvantaged communes, remote and border areas. Loans have been provided to over 31.8 million poor, near poor households and policy beneficiaries with total amount of over VND 433 trillion. Policy credit helps more than 4.5 million households to cross the poverty line, attracts and  create new jobs for over 3.4 million laborers; more than 3.5 million disadvantaged get loans for study; build 9.9 million clean water supply and sanitation works in rural areas, over 11 thousand flood shelters for poor households in central provinces, more than 105 thousand houses over flood for households the Mekong River Delta and nearly 528 thousand houses for poor households and policy households with no housing in the country; over 112,000 laborers go to work overseas for a certain period of time etc. 

VBSP is currently extending financial services for around 7 million household customers (out of which 3.5 million is women) who are the poor, disadvantaged students, ethnic minority, persons with disabilities, business households, merchants in disadvantaged areas, microenterprises, SMEs, HIV carriers, rehabilitated drug addicts and reformed prostitutes etc. As of December 31^st 2018, total assets of  VBSP is more than VND 199,000 billion (~ USD 8.6 billion; total loan portfolio reaches over VND 187,000 billion (~USD 8.1 billion) with the default debt rate is 0.78%.

To date, VBSP becomes the biggest microfinance provider in Vietnam and ranked as one of the largest microfinance institutions in the world as evaluated by the World Bank Group and will be the bank which plays such an important role in financial inclusion development target in Vietnam.

Besides some achieved results, VBSP still meets with some difficulties and challenges such as: almost all customers are the poor, the near-poor and other vulnerable groups living in remote, ethic mountainous and rural areas where face limitations in infrastructure, network and financial service access; lack of resources and experience in terms of developing digital banking services and rural, agriculture finance for the rural pro-poor.

vietnamplus.vn